Liverpool was unique among English towns in the rate of its commercial development from the late seventeenth century. Liverpool, 1660–1750 provides the first significant detailed
published study of the social and political structure of the town during this crucial period. The authors utilize a number of methodological approaches to early modern Liverpool, using parish registers, probate material and town government records to consider the characteristics of marriage, birth and death in a fast-growing and mobile population; the occupational structure, family lives and connections of workers in the town; and the political structures and struggles of the period. It is hoped that this book will provide a stimulus to further investigation of Liverpool’s early and precocious eighteenth-century growth.

Diana E. Ascott is an honorary Fellow in the School of History at the University of Liverpool.

Fiona Lewis is a freelance researcher.

Michael Power, who died shortly before this book was published, was an honorary Senior Fellow in the School of History at the University of Liverpool.

Introduction
1. Contexts: The Emergence of an Early Modern Port
2. Population and Demography
3. Occupation: Structure, Mobility and Succession
4. Family and Friends: Inheritance Strategies in a Mobile Population
5. Government
6. Politics
Conclusion
Appendices
1. Sources and Methods
2. Probate Listing
3. Overall Sample Sizes
Bibliography
Index

... it is (and is likely to remain for some considerable time) the definitive study of Liverpool’s early demography and the authors are to be congratulated for bringing this important and difficult material to publication. Urban History,